Symbiosis
by HushBugger
Summary: Cross-over with The Metamorphosis by Kafka. Gregor's body ends up in Mount Ebott. He is not as dead as he seemed, and he attempts to build a new life, free from his past.
1. Chapter 1

One morning, as Gregor Samsa woke up from a deep slumber, he found himself in a bed surrounded by monsters. He lay with his hard, armored back facing the ceiling. He turned his head a little, and saw figures the likes of which he had never seen before.

One looked most like a large frog, but made out of cloth, with a face painted on. Other eyes peeked out from under it, but when he looked directly, they retreated. The body of another was taken up almost entirely by a single eye, and Gregor couldn't help but wonder if its skull had room for anything else. In the back, on a chair, reading, but nevertheless dominating the room, sat a tall woman - if that was indeed what she was. She was covered in white fur. Horns grew out of her scalp. Her ears draped the side of her head. Her eyes were red. Overall, she didn't strike him as animal, or human, but as something else entirely.

"I must have died," he thought. "I have died, and gone to hell. The devil doesn't look the way I thought." He pondered this turn of events. "I should stay quiet," he decided. "When they notice I am awake she will surely start reading me my sins." He closed his eyes, and was soon asleep again.

When he woke up, the room wasn't as crowded. Only the woman in the back remained, still reading the same book. He paid attention to the room instead. It was barely furnished. There was the chair, and his bed, and an empty nightstand. More unusually, there was a boulder in the middle of the room. It wasn't decorated, or used as a table, or in any way remarkable compared to other boulders Gregor had seen before. But unlike the others, this rock was right in the middle of the room. It would have seemed out of place, but it was much too massive to get there accidentally. It looked like it was right where it was supposed to be.

A voice he could only describe as gravelly spoke up. "Hey. Are you awake?"

It hadn't come from the woman. She reacted to it, putting down her book and standing up. When the rock slid aside to make room, his suspicions were confirmed. The rock had talked.

"Thank you, Second," she said. "Can you give us a moment?" The rock slid toward the door, and pushed it open. She waited until the door was closed again before she continued. "My name is Toriel. Do you understand me?"

He nodded.

"Good. Can you tell me your name?"

He could not. His transformation had rendered his speech incomprehensible. He hadn't been able to make himself understood to his family, or his manager. This would be no different. He talked anyway, to show her his situation. "My name is Gregor Samsa. I apologize, but my mouth is not fit for speaking, and I can't answer your questions."

"Good morning, Gregor," she said. She silently moved her lips, trying to follow what he said. "I am afraid I did not catch the rest. Can you repeat it?"

Gregor was stunned. He talked more slowly this time. "Can you understand what I say?"

"Of course," Toriel answered. "I had to adjust to your accent, but it is nothing I have not heard before. Are you from outside Home? Nobody recognized you, and you were found in an unusual place. With unusual injuries, I should add."

He needed some time to absorb this. She called his deformed speech, that nobody before had even identified as speech, an accent? And what was "Home?" Where had he ended up? He played it safe. "I am from Prague."

This shocked her. "You _are_ from the surface, then. How -" She stopped herself. "I am sorry. You must be so confused. Do you know what monsters are?"

She told Gregor about monster history. The war, the treaty, the banishment. It was hard to believe that an entire species had been sealed away, and was living in a mountain, forgotten by everyone. But he had already seen enough things that didn't allow any easy explanation.

"Now, can you tell me about your history?" she inquired. "It must be unusual. Are you a monster? While I treated you your body seemed mostly animal."

So Gregor told her about himself. About his sudden transformation, and how it had cost him his job and left his family without his support. How they had, quite reasonably, confined him to his room. About the kindness with which his sister kept treating him. How he had disturbed his mother. How he had continued to be a pest, and a problem for the people he loved. He explained up to the dawn, after a particularly troubling day, when he felt he slipped away. After that, he remembered nothing, and it was a mystery to him how he ended up at Mount Ebott. Toriel didn't interrupt him once, but frowned the entire time.


	2. Chapter 2

With Toriel's encouragement, Gregor slid off the bed. The fatigue he expected to feel in his legs did not come. He had no trouble lifting his body off the ground.

Now that he stopped to think about it, he felt better all over. The pain in his back was gone. Emboldened, he followed Toriel through the hall and out the door.

Gregor found that, with Toriel's help, he had already recovered completely. He could not just walk, he had less trouble walking than he had had in months. He went outside.

Outside! He had spent such a long time inside, surrounded by walls, that leaving was exhilarating. It didn't matter that the sky was blocked by the cavern roof. Just looking into the distance, knowing that nothing blocked the way, knowing that he could walk there if he wanted to, _and actually going there_ \- he hadn't known how much he missed it. He walked around a lot, just to enjoy the constant changes of scenery.

Satisfied with Gregor's health, Toriel found him a small house in Home. She said she didn't have time to help him adjust to the underground, but she recommended him a guide. Gregor got help from the boulder he had first seen in her guest room. Second, she had called him - he liked to go by Second Rock.

"It's more than just a job description," he explained after they were introduced. "I've been doing this for six hundred years. Almost all my life. I don't do Second Rock. I _am_ Second Rock."

"Six hundred years?" Gregor asked.

"Six hundred and twelve, this March. My grandfather was Second Rock before me. He's just a pebble now."

"A pebble?"

"Erosion. Do you want to see where I work?"

He led Gregor to a room with a bridge and three rectangular switches embedded in the ground. After they crossed the bridge, spikes shot up through it. They were large, with rounded tips. They didn't look very dangerous.

"This is in the preliminary puzzle track." Second Rock explained. "Young monsters get used to puzzles here. They're tamer than the ones in Home." He slid on top of one of the switches. The spikes retreated. "If they move Fourth they can go through."

"Aren't you too heavy for kids to push?" Gregor asked.

"If they're small I help them. As long as they try."

"But why do you have all these puzzles?"

Even without a face, Second Rock managed to radiate bewilderment. "They're _puzzles_." he said.

"Yes, but…" Gregor struggled to find the words. "When did monsters start making puzzles?"

"After the war. We were getting settled. We were afraid humans would follow us. So we made traps. But we wanted them to be fair. Nobody likes puzzles you can't figure out."

"Do any humans come down here?"

"Oh. No. It's not about that any more."

Gregor was treated to a long history of puzzles in the underground. It was interesting, even if Second Rock tended to assume a lot of knowledge of Gregor. He had to interrupt to ask what a sokoboid was.

His enthusiasm was infectious. Gregor still didn't understand why, but a fire had been lit in his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Gregor took up a job in puzzle maintenance, and mainly worked with Second Rock. Second Rock had a lot of ideas, but lacked the limbs and mobility to execute them. Gregor's ability to crawl on walls came in handy, and with the right tools he could manipulate the fine mechanisms that made puzzles tick. He learned by doing. Second Rock was always willing to patiently explain what needed to be done and how to do it, and as time went on, Gregor needed less and less instruction.

When Second Rock was satisfied with Gregor's knowledge of puzzle machinery, he started involving him in puzzle design. Although it was shaped by the options afforded by the machinery, it was much different. It was more intuitive, harder to make objective. He liked it, but he never felt as confident about it.

The payoff came when he attended the opening of a puzzle he had worked on. He watched a child move boxes this way and that way, sometimes backtracking, until all switches were covered. A bell went off, and the child cheered. Gregor felt his face make an unfamiliar motion. He realized he was smiling.

He wasn't just learning about puzzles - he also learned a few new things about himself. One day, as he was climbing a few meters up a wall, his legs lost their grip and he started to fall down. But he felt something unseal on his back, involuntarily, and before he knew it, he was hovering in the air.

That was how he found out he had wings.

There wasn't much use for them in the cramped catacombs, but he soon made a habit of flying around the city. It had ample accommodations, thanks to the number of flying monsters it housed. Buildings with multiple floors often had balconies as additional entrances. But even if there hadn't been then Gregor would fly, just for the fun of it.

He made small talk with the other monsters he met in the air. They were occasionally surprised by his lack of basic knowledge, but they were pleasant enough.

The queen still met him regularly, to interrogate him about the surface. She was interested in every detail, and made copious notes. She asked him about politics, culture, national borders, language, and any and all myths that may involve monsters. Even when Gregor was uncertain (which was often) she would write down his best guess.

After a volley of queries during one of the sessions, she switched the subject. "What do you know about the layout of the underground?"

"I know my way around Home," he replied.

She smiled. "Mount Ebott is rather larger than that. We have crammed ourselves here in the back, but a vast stretch of space to the East is unoccupied, all the way up to the largest exit. It may seem silly to you, with your first-hand knowledge, but we were still afraid that the humans would at some point follow behind us and - finish the job."

"You're still hiding?"

"We are. You must have picked up on the general attitude towards humans. Children still scare each other with tales about your species."

"But after all that time?"

"We did not know that we had been forgotten. Even if no humans had any intention of attacking us, we could not be sure that none would in the future. But if nobody remembers our existence then it should be safe to move to the wider caves."

Gregor was somewhat shocked by this. He understood how his knowledge would be interesting to someone sealed underground for thousands of years, but he hadn't understood it was this useful - not just satisfying intellectual curiosity, but leading to monumental change. The trust she put in him was astounding.

"I plan to make the announcement tomorrow morning, with my husband. Please do not tell anyone until then."

The news must have spread quickly. Second Rock already knew when Gregor met him the next day, even though he rarely left the Ruins.

"Did you hear?" he asked.

"I did," answered Gregor.

"Many opportunities. There's ice out there. And water. Lots of potential."

Gregor didn't need to ask what he was talking about. "Are you going?"

"No. I belong here. You should go."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes! It's all empty now. It needs puzzles. It needs you."

He considered the idea over the next several days, and decided he agreed. He liked the underground and wanted to see more of it.

He rarely thought about the surface any more.

Gregor was finally home.


End file.
